Clayton Markech, 2023 NIST Research Intern

Biography

SPS Chapter: Carthage College

I am Clayton Markech, a rising senior at Carthage College in Kenosha, WI. I am finishing my double major in math and physics this coming year and a minor in data science. I’ve grown up playing sports and still play football at Carthage as a tight end. Outside of school and studying, I often watch sports of many varieties, play video games, and work out. I also play the saxophone on occasion.

Internship

Host: National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Project

Abstract

We experimentally verified the quantum entanglement between two polarization states of single photon pair. The experimental setup is based on a Polarization Sagnac interferometer in which a periodically poled potassium titanyl phosphate (PPKTP) crystal is placed for generating two superposed biphoton pairs with orthogonally polarized states using bidirectional spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC). The correlation between the two polarization-entangled photons propagating in distant directions is examined by measuring a set of quantum interference graphs as their relative polarization states are scanned. The analyzed data shows quantum interference visibilities of greater than 99.7%, which show a strong correlation between the two separate photons. The Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality value for Bell’s nonlocality test is S = 2.8177±0.0032 (theoretical maximum 2.828), verifying the two photons are strongly entangled in polarization.

Final Presentation

Internship Blog

Episode I: New Beginnings

Hello!

I would first like to introduce myself briefly. My name is Clayton Markech, or Clay for short. I am one of the NIST research interns working with Dr. Martin Sohn. I am ecstatic to participate in this internship program, and I hail from Carthage College in Kenosha, WI.

One week into my 10-week adventure to DC and the East Coast. Exactly one week ago, I hopped on a 6 am flight for move-in, and the week since has been nothing short of action-packed. My first adventure in this city was on Memorial Day when two people I had never met and I strolled down to watch the parade.

We had yet to check the weather very closely because shortly after we got to the parade, it started pouring all the while we were there and on the walk back. The first full day ended with a dinner with a dozen more people I’d never met. It turns out that is not as bad of an idea as it may sound; they were all great people, and they just so happened to be the other SPS interns here for the summer.

The following day was the first day of the internship, albeit orientation day. The entire group of interns, most of which had not ridden the metro in DC before, got on, hoping to end up in the right place. Luckily, a few people with experience got us to orientation on time. The orientation itself flew by. It included talks from people like the director of SPS, Brad, and one of the founders of the internship program, Jack, and others who gave us tips on the internship and our future endeavors. It was a great day. We even built towers out of spaghetti and marshmallows for an icebreaker, as I’m sure many of you have for school. A group of us ended the day by watching the sunset overlooking the Potomac’s banks and the Arlington skyline, pictured below.

The next three days of the week were relatively uneventful. They were my first few days at my job site, the National Institute of Standards and Technology or NIST. It was my first few days there, and I did not have my ID yet. That meant I couldn’t go anywhere without having my mentor in my back pocket, even though I wanted to explore the NIST campus. Nothing exhilarating happened in the first few days at NIST. Still, the highlights of my first three days include rereading articles at least half a dozen times, watching a few YouTube videos on the research topic, and a bunch of safety training I need before using any equipment. What I thought was cool and something I’ve never experienced, nor did I think I was going to experience during this internship, was the fact that I have my own office and my own phone number extension.

On the other hand, the social elements with the other interns in the evenings were full of activities. Wednesday, we walked to the National Mall, where we played Spikeball, some got ice cream, and we sat and talked. Thursday evening, we went to dinner then I was introduced to a new board game, Azul. I thought it was fun even though I didn’t-fully understand it; Friday, we all hung out in someone’s room for the night, playing games and discussing our weeks.

This weekend has flown by. I slept in Saturday morning because I had been waking up by 6:30 every morning to get ready for work. When I was fully awake, we were about to leave for the movie theater. We walked for at least a half hour for the scenic views of the White House and downtown DC. We saw the new Spider-Man movie, which was extremely good and had a well-written story. Not much else happened other than late-night crepes yesterday.

Today I did my first big grocery shop of the summer, which took me to multiple stores, although I did get to explore a little more. That brings us to as I’m writing this blog where I’m sitting on the backside of the Lincoln Memorial watching the sunset; I’ll be back in a week for the second installment. That’s all, folks.

Clayton Markech

Episode II: The First Full Week

Welcome to the second installment of my weekly blog. This week was not as action-packed as the first week. I have yet to receive my ID badge from NIST; meanwhile, some other NIST interns have gotten their badges, even though I had my fingerprinting appointment over a month ago. At least one other intern, so far, has done their fingerprinting appointment at NIST when they arrived but got their ID before me.

The highlights of my week at work include moving into a new office, attending a division meeting for the first time, and finishing all my safety training. The office switch has both good and bad outcomes. I got moved to a meeting room instead of a real office because there was a new SURF intern that started this week that is working with one of the people I was sharing the office with. The benefit of the move is that I have my own office, but there is also a giant TV in the meeting room that I can use if necessary. The downside is that I no longer have my own phone extension which I was kinda bummed about. Although I don’t think I was going to use it much anyways. The other thing is that I lost most of the social interactions that I would’ve had in the shared office. I don’t think I have spoken a word while in the office for a few days this week. That kind of bummed me out, but so is life.

I am happy that I finished my safety training. I finished that on Wednesday during a three-hour in-person training on the importance and awareness of using lasers safely. That was fun, and the instructor was pretty funny. Plus, he brought in cookies for us. I checked out the NIST giftshop on my way back to my office after the training, and I will definitely be stopping back at some point this summer. The division meeting was neat, as it was my first one. I saw all the knowledgeable people in my division talk about the happenings in their work. Although, it was mainly administrative, as I was expecting.

Another significant happening this week was the forest fires in Canada. It made the air quality quite terrible. When I left to go to work one morning, I could feel the particles in the air when breathing. Luckily, when I got to work, my mentor had a couple of extra masks that he gave me until the air quality improved. Thankfully, it has, and I no longer need the masks.

On the more non-work-related side, we walked down to the National Mall one night and tossed a frisbee around for a while. I officially found a gym that I could use, although it’s a national chain that happened to have a location near me. Either way, I’m happy to be working out consistently again. A group of us also went to an event on Friday evening called Jazz in the Garden, which is a neat event. You must enter a raffle to get tickets, and I won this week. Every Friday evening, the National Gallery of Art hosts a musician(s) that perform in the sculpture garden. So we brought a blanket, sat in the grass, and listened to music for a while. They also sold sangria which was quite tasty. I would definitely recommend the event, and the sangria, if you get the chance.

That concludes the week two update for the blog. Let’s do the same time next week for installment three. That’s all, folks.

Episode III: World Champions

Hello all, and welcome back to another blog post.

This was the first week where I started with the hands-on part of my research. I also finally got my badge. This is very nice because now I don’t technically have to be escorted everywhere, even though my mentor didn’t care about that rule on the second day of my internship. I can get in my building now, which means I can show up whenever I want, and I don’t need my mentor to be there. As I mentioned, I got to work hands-on for the first time. Although because it was my first time, I wasn’t allowed to do much. However, it’s nice not to be stuck in an office for an entire day. The first picture attached to the bottom of the blog is my experimental setup for generating and measuring entangled photons. The only downside is the way the data collection works. Each trial takes 20-25 minutes, and because we are essentially measuring light sensitivity, we have to keep all the lights off in the room. So I sat in the dark for hours on end on Tuesday.

Other NIST things include very spotty WI-FI this week, which didn’t work at all on Friday, and I still cannot sign on to the laptop that NIST gave me to use because my ID doesn’t have the necessary security features. I need to get an exemption from those measures, but the exemption hasn’t worked thus far. That means I spent my entire Thursday afternoon on the phone with IT trying to figure it out. We have a short-term fix but no long-term one as of right now.

As for my week outside of work, the week started off great when Denver beat Miami in game five of the NBA finals to win the championship. I bought a T-shirt that night before I went to bed just to ensure I could get in a reasonable amount of time. The middle of the week was sort of uneventful. Not much outside of work, but I went to the gym every day.

On Thursday after work, we had a dinner/social event that I was almost late to because of bad delays on the metro. However, I made it there just before it started. After we got back to the dorms that night, some of us went out to Captain Cookie, which was quite tasty. Friday, there was a large group of us planning on going to Jazz in the Garden again; however, it was canceled due to the weather forecast. Even though it barely rained on Friday. Saturday was pretty low-key for the first half of the day. We got to attend the National Orchestral Institute performance on the University of Maryland campus. We almost didn’t make it there, though, because we suspected that our driver was under the influence of something as he was slurring his words and straight up ran a stop sign. We survived. The event was great; we got food before the event and got to listen to amazing musicians for the night (attached below). And today, Sunday, a bunch of the interns went to the Georgetown flea market. There was some pretty neat stuff at the flea market, but I only bought a few trading cards, which worked out well.

That’s all for this week; I hope y’all can catch the next installment in a week.

Episode IV: Spaghetti and Jazz

This week was a short week in terms of how many days I went into NIST this week. The week started with a holiday for Juneteenth. I few of us went to the botanical gardens during the day with someone we met at the dinner last week that works at NASA. The highlight from my day off was the potluck all the interns did for dinner that night. The theme we decided on for the potluck was Italian. I made spaghetti Bolognese. I have never made my own pasta sauce prior to that, but I think the sauce turned out better than I expected. From what I heard the feedback from everyone else matched the way I felt. The funniest thing from Monday night was Jaden decided to make homemade gnocchi. But it turned out that he didn’t budget his time well, so he showed up an hour after we started eating.

The next day work was uneventful. It was the first day that my mentor was out of town. I did not have much to do that day, so I just read some articles related to my research topic. I did, however, get my laptop set up to the Wi-Fi permanently. That means I never have to mess with the IT department again... hopefully. The highlight from Tuesday was a group of the interns went to Jazz on the Rocks at a local bar/restaurant. The only downside from that event was that between the music and other people at the event I couldn’t hear what the people in my group were saying.

Wednesday was the most exciting day I have had at NIST so far this summer. I got to run the data collection for my presentation at the end of the summer. What I didn’t expect was because we needed 10 trials for the averages the data collection took five hours. Luckily, I didn’t have to sit and watch the collection the entire time which was nice. That night, a group of us went to a bowling alley/place because they had unlimited bowling after 8 pm. That was fun. I can happily say that I won both games we played. :)

Thursday was the second day of the week where I didn’t have to go into NIST. That’s because we had a networking workshop at ACP at lunch which is the opposite direction as NIST from DC. That was a real neat event. We got to meet John Mather who is a Noble Prize winner in Physics. He talked about the project he is currently working on which was fascinating to hear about. That night we watched a movie called Forbidden Planet. It’s a space movie from the 50s and John Mather mentioned that it was his favorite move. So we decided we had to watch it.

Overall, Friday was a slow day. Both at work and after. A large group of us did go to the monuments at night. That was cool to see the monuments lit up. We also stopped to see Einstein on our way back. Saturday during the day was uneventful. At night, however, we got to present at an event called Astronomy on the Mall. It was an outreach kind of event. We got to show people physics demos and teach kids about physics. It was a neat event. As we were leaving, we discovered that because the Smithsonian museums were open late, they turned into big parties that I specifically did not stay for. Sunday nothing was done or accomplished other than writing this blog and going grocery shopping.

That concludes my summary for my fourth week of the internship program. Hope y’all come back for the next installment in a week.

Episode V: Sunsets and The Capitol

Another action-packed week in the books. It’s hard to think that we’re halfway through the summer already.

In terms of work, this was the most eventful week of the summer. I was given data to analyze and create charts showing the results. Conceptually it was not a struggle to do. However, in order to do that, I needed to write code in a program called MATLAB. I have never used MATLAB prior to this. Through the course of the first three days of the week, I was teaching myself how to use MATLAB. More specifically, I learned how to perform the specific task I needed. I attached a photo of the chart I created, but I’m not going to go in-depth about how it works or what each line represents. That would take too long for a blog post. I finished the chart on Wednesday, then needed to do it all over again with a new dataset which didn’t take long because I already had the code. Thursday at work was uneventful, and I did not go in on Friday for reasons later discussed in the blog.

In terms of the social aspect of the week, I participated in activities every day of the week. Monday night was an event called Astronomy on Tap. We got to hear three different speakers who were all extremely knowledgeable in their respective fields. The first talk involved the sun and its magnetic features, the second was on exoplanets and their respective host stars, and the final was about black holes. They had bingo going on during the talks, so in the presentations, if the speaker said a keyword, you’d cross it off the bingo card. I won and got a sticker. They also had trivia between speakers. Unfortunately, I did not win. However, there were six winners, I believe, and all of them were a part of the internship program.

Tuesday night, a few of us went to an open mic comedy night. None of us performed, but it was a fun night. We mainly went because they said there was going to be bingo also to win free drinks. The issue was that many of the bingo squares were ambiguous, so it wasn’t very clear when you got a space. A couple of people in the group won bingo, but I don’t know if they actually won because of the ambiguity.

Wednesday night, a large group of us went kayaking on the Potomac. We got to go out for two hours for $15. The company that runs it is the Potomac Conservancy, so ultimately, the fifteen dollars was a donation to help further clean up the river quality.

Skipping to Friday, we got to tour the Capitol Building around one. Which is the reason I didn’t go to NIST on Friday. It was cool because the intern working on the hill, Ruthie, led the tour. I’ve been to the Capitol before, but it was so long ago that the introduction video had changed a ton. I also barely remember the first time I was there, so it was neat to go through it again. Because I didn’t go to work on Friday, a couple of us went to dollar beer night Thursday night. That was really fun because since I’ve been in DC, I haven’t liked the prices of drinks compared to Wisconsin, so it was nice to have a deal that I supported.

Saturday, the entire afternoon/night was taken up by a 4th of July bar crawl. I’ve never done a bar crawl. The experience was great but set up a little differently from the ones I know in Wisconsin. I think it was because of the scale of the bar crawl here, but I understand them as going in order from one bar to another. The crawl here was essentially going wherever you want within the list of bars in the crawl. I also tried Muncheez, which is Lebanese food. I thought it was great, but I can’t remember for the life of me what the dish I got was called.

Sunday was very similar to last week. The only thing I accomplished today was making dinner and writing this blog post. I’ll be back in a week for the next one.

Episode VI: Fireworks

Another week in the books and officially into the second half of my journey this summer. And another week, of course, means more memories.

Contrary to the introduction to this blog. This past week was probably one of the most uneventful weeks this summer in terms of what I got done at work, as well as social outings during the week. The week at work was incredibly slow as it was the last week of my mentor being out of town. I had finished almost all of the work I was supposed to do while he was away by the end of the day Wednesday. Until I was told late Friday that I should have an informal presentation ready for him upon his return which ate up almost all of my Sunday. This is also most likely the last week when I’ll have a really short week. The past couple of weeks have been short in terms of the number of days I travel to NIST. Mainly because of other internship events but of course with holidays. I also started to plan my abstract by the end of the week because there was nothing else for me to do.

On the other hand, as I said in the introduction, the social events were not plentiful, but the ones that occurred will be memorable. The week’s social events started out with going to a Nationals baseball game on Monday. Though the Nationals were the home team I was pulling more for visiting team, the Cincinnati Reds. The first reason is that I looked up the rosters before the game and I didn’t recognize anyone on the Nationals but I recognized names on the Reds. And the second reason is that being from the Midwest, even if the other team is in the same division, I’d rather see the team from the Midwest win rather than the east or west coast teams. That being said the Reds did end up beating the Nationals which I was internally happy about at the time but didn’t express my feelings around the Nationals fans that were around. After the game the Nationals had a little firework show for the fans. We moved to where we thought we would be able to see the fireworks. When they started, however, we discovered that the videoboard in the outfield was still blocking our view from almost all the fireworks. Luckily, we didn’t have to move far to have our view not be obstructed, and the show was relatively decent.

Tuesday was the 4th. I did absolutely nothing during the morning and afternoon. A group of us left in the early evening to get a spot on the Mall for the firework show happening later that night. I believe we got to the Mall around 6:15, but the fireworks weren’t scheduled to start until 9:00. I was glad we got there that early because it really started to fill up by 7:30 and with the size of the group we had, we probably wouldn’t have found a spot if we had shown up at that time or later. The show itself was probably the best fireworks show I’ve seen in my life. There was a playlist of songs that played during the show that was probably 20 minutes long, and the fireworks matched the songs that were playing. My favorite part of the show was when they played the song from the Sandlot fireworks scene. We also got lucky because apparently we were in only of the only spots that could actually hear the music because we were close enough to the speakers.

The rest of the week was uneventful. The only other thing that I did was go out with some of the other interns Friday and Saturday nights.

That’s the gist of what happened during week 6 of my internship. I’ll be back in a week.

Episode VII: 007

This week was another week that was rather slow, at least until the weekend rolled around.

This week at work was the first week my mentor returned from his three-week leave. That being said, we didn’t have a meeting until Wednesday, where I informed him of what I’ve done since he’s been gone. It’s safe to say that he was pleased with what I had accomplished. I also got the title for my presentation ironed out, as well as started working on my abstract. Friday was the longest day I’ve had at NIST this summer. Granted, with a commute time of a little over an hour each way, this was not incredibly fun. I got to NIST around 8:30-9:00 and had our weekly meeting at 11, which hasn’t happened in three weeks. At the meeting, my mentor informed my postdoc and me that we would start setting up the next part of our experiment. Although it sounds cool, I don’t think it will be completed in time to be included in my presentation. We started the setup at around one. Took a little break around three, then worked until 5:15, when I caught the 5:30 shuttle back to the metro. While the time at NIST may not be too long, including the commute, it was close to a 12-hour day which I am definitely not used to.

The other thing that happened this week was that my dad came to visit. He flew in Thursday night, and I went and met him at the airport. The thing was that it was both of our first times at that airport, and neither of us realized there were two different baggage claim areas depending on the terminal you were in, so I waited by the wrong baggage claim, but we eventually found each other. I took him out to dinner that night after he dropped off his bags. We went to Tonic, where we each got a burger and a side of some form of potato. Friday, I obviously had to work, so as far as I know, he wandered around DC, walked to the Washington Monument, and saw the rest of the memorials on the Mall.

We went to Arlington National Cemetary on Saturday because he had never been and wanted to go. We got there around 12:20. And we didn’t pay for the guided tour on the shuttles they had, so we walked around for about 2-3 hours and saw the changing of the guards at the Tomb of the Unkown Soldier, JFK’s grave with the eternal flame, and the Challenger Shuttle memorial. From there we headed back, aching and dehydrated, but not before roughly eleven-thousand steps in that short time period. We both took cold showers when we got back. I also had a killer migraine the rest of the day from being dehydrated. We ordered dinner, District Taco, and called it a night.

Sunday, we woke up and went to the National Spy Museum which is just off the National Mall. We spent a long time there. Our time to get there was 9:15, and we didn’t leave until around two. Mainly because we both were reading every little sign about every artifact they had and were really taking our time. They also had this undercover mission thing where you could pretend to be a spy and play along through the different exhibits. We started doing that, but with all the kids there lines began to form at the kiosks for the checkpoints.

There’s a reason for the title of this blog. The museum had the prop car of the Aston Martin DB5 prop car that belonged to James Bond in the movie Goldfinger. They even had a little demo, so you could see the lights drop and the machine guns poke out and “start firing,” as well as the changing license plate and a few other tricks. Oh, and it’s the week seven blog so it works out.

This again concludes another week of the internship and another blog. Be back in a week.

Episode VIII: Late Nights

This past week has been quite uneventful, in all honesty, but I did get quite a bit done at work.

This week at work, I finished my abstract for the final presentation with the help of my mentor, which was interesting because I have never written a formal abstract. Only abstracts for school projects that I don’t think the professor even read. I had the abstract done Thursday, which was nice because I did not have to stress about it this weekend. I also helped my mentor and my postdoc setup up the start of the next part of the experiment, which involves visualizing the interference patterns and ultimately being able to produce a “ghost” image. A “ghost” image is essentially an outline of a picture that we put into the optical setup, but the path of the light that passes through the outline is blocked and doesn’t reach the camera. However, the outline still appears. I did most of the work on aligning the portion of the optical setup that will trigger the camera to take pictures. Which included approximately seven components. I also learned that the camera we are using is 70 thousand dollars. (I have included a picture) That kind of blew my mind.

As for outside-of-work things. I started biking to and from the gym to save money. However, I am starting to work later and later, so I am going to the gym later and later. That means I often bike to and from the gym in the dark, but it’s fine because the path is lit up the whole way there. The first night I biked back after dark I stopped to take a picture of the Kennedy Center. And the photo, I think, turned out rather well.

It’s a short one, but that’s all I got for this week’s blog. See y’all in a week.

Episode IX: A Nightmare of a Commute

This past week at work has been the busiest week all summer. Mainly because of the preparation for the final presentation in less than a week. I do have to say I’m thankful to my mentor for it, though. He set a schedule for me in terms of the progression of my presentation, and I am very grateful for that. He had me send my first draft to him by Tuesday before I went home. Now, on Sunday night, I am currently working on draft four for tomorrow. The feedback I have gotten as I prepare my presentation has been vital for me to clear up misunderstandings I had previously. However, in the criticism I have received on my presentation, he has also given me credit for how well I have picked up the topic after having no knowledge prior to starting the internship. Which is a great morale boost as I finish the presentation. We also got to tour some of the NIST campus on Friday. That was neat because I spend my whole time in one building when there are at least a dozen others on the campus. We got to see the million-pound stack (photo below) which is used to test the limits of compressive and tensile strength of materials/products.

Outside of work, it was more of the same not that active of a week. I kept my schedule of going to the gym when I get home from work. On Tuesday, I went to dinner with some friends where I had ramen for the first time. (That isn’t 50 cents from the grocery store) I thought it was good, but not something I’d necessarily go out of my way for. Thursday, was a nightmare of a commute to and from work. On the way to work, something happened on the metro so there was a delay. I got stuck on a train between my stop and the one just before my stop. I sat there for at least 20-25 minutes before I finally got to my stop. And it was just in time to miss the shuttle to NIST which had me wait another half an hour. It doesn’t stop there either. On the way home, there were still problems. So I got to take the metro two stops then had to get off and ride a shuttle bus to connect the next three stops. Where I could finally get back on the metro and travel the rest of the way back. The commute home usually takes around an hour. Because of the detour, it took just over an hour and forty-five minutes. I was not happy about it, but water under the bridge at this point.

That’s the conclusion to my second to last week in DC for the internship. I’ll be back one more time in a week for the last installment.

Episode X: The Finale

Monday included more updates to the presentation at work. A couple meetings with my mentor about one last component I could add to my presentation, the visual verification of my research. In the afternoon I ran down to the lab with my postdoc and got a quick video that represented the visual verification of the phenomenon I was researching. It was a great last minute addition to my presentation, and I’m glad that he mentioned that I could add it. After work a group went down to the mall for a last social night there. We played Spikeball until we couldn’t see the ball due to darkness. It will be a great memory that I have for a long time.

Tuesday at work was like the majority of the early parts of my internship. I did almost nothing at work except a little editing on my presentation. In all honesty I can’t remember if I did anything worth noting that night. I think it was a chill night, but I could completely be mistaken. I would recommend checking in with the other interns’ blogs this week. I might have done something with them, but I might not have. And that was my Tuesday.

Wednesday was my last day at NIST. It was a bittersweet day. I was glad to be done, but I also felt as though I was missing out on the next part of the research because I won’t be there to see it. I returned all of the items that NIST gave me for the internship then I had one last practice presentation with my mentor. And after nine drafts of my slides and giving him rough presentations he finally said it was a very good presentation. Now that might be because he couldn’t have me change anything else at that point because he wouldn’t see me again, but we’ll never know. After work, a group of us went to the Wharf, which is a place that has live music on Wednesday nights. Almost, if not, all the other interns have been there before but it was my first time. I really enjoyed hanging out with them as the music played in the background. We played some Jenga and some bags and it was overall a good night.

Thursday, we had our practice presentations. I was lucky enough to get to practice in the room we were going to present in on Friday. I say that because the group of interns was split half and half and I lucked out. I definitely got some helpful comments about my presentation which I was able to include that night in one final edit of the presentation. I am really glad that we had practice presentations and that Brad was really picky about our presentations because it left us with a lot of constructive criticism. After the practice session, a couple interns and myself went to the Air and Space Museum. Although half of it was closed for construction, the half we did see I greatly enjoyed. From there we went back to the dorm and a short time later a large group of us went to Tonic for dinner and got to sit at the exact same table as we did in the beginning of the internship when we were first meeting each other. It was nostalgic and we got to leave our mark because the restaurant encourages us to draw on the wall in the booth we were in.

Yesterday was the culmination of all the work, preparation, and stress that went into my research project. The intern colloquium was great. At least in person. Everyone did a wonderful job presenting what they did this summer, and it was amazing to hear the vastly different things people did. It was an amazing experience to present the research that I myself performed and analyzed. However, we found out that there were some audio problems on the live stream at some point. I’m grateful that it didn’t affect me, but also feel bad for the interns it affected. After the colloquium, I packed up a box to ship home. And I spent the rest of the afternoon continuing to pack my suitcases. A small group of us walked down to the Lincoln Memorial and sat on the stairs next to the river for the last sunset of the summer and talked about everything under the sun, from physics and the internship to college football to what the future may hold. We held the last pregame of the summer before going out. Where, of course we played games, but we also went around and reminisced our favorite memories of the summer as well as other fun stories. Where a small group of us went out one last time. We said our goodbyes that night whether it was at the end of the pregame for people not going out or after we got back from going out. I’m not really a big goodbye person, but I’m glad I did it.

And that brings us to today, time to head home. I woke up around seven this morning to finish packing my things up for my flight. I got to Reagan National Airport at 8:30, sat down, and had a good breakfast that included a waffle, bacon, and eggs. My flight out of DC left at 10. I am currently sitting in the G concourse of Chicago’s O’hare airport awaiting my connection home as I finish writing the last blog of my summer.

Finally, to end the summer I would like to thank everyone that supported me as an intern in the SPS program, all of the other interns for making this summer the best one I’ve had so far, and for everyone that followed along with the blog. I’ll cherish the memories from this summer for a long time to come.

Thank you.